A Soldier’s Conscience
by Natalie3
Summary: When OZ creates a deady virus, the Gundam Pilots get involved...
1. Chapter One

Chapter One  
  
The soft sound of typing pervaded the tiny room. Heero's eyes focused carefully on the screen in front of him. Even when a pillow rose and nearly smacked him on the side of his head, he merely caught it and threw it back at Duo, his eyes never leaving the screen even for a moment.  
  
"You are, of course, aware that it is after two in the morning," Duo grumbled.  
  
Heero didn't answer.  
  
"Not that you should be at all apologetic for keeping me up or anything."  
  
"Either go back to sleep or help me," Heero replied.  
  
With a resigned sigh Duo pulled over a chair from the other desk in their shared room and flopped down next to Heero. "So what are you doing?"  
  
"I'm trying to get into H-Z-917784 again," Heero answered.  
  
"You would have the file name memorized."  
  
"It's the only one I haven't been able to access. I've already jumped three security barriers. I'm still not in the system."  
  
"Why not just cut your way in?"  
  
"I don't want them to know anyone's been in there."  
  
Duo leaned over to peer at the glowing screen. "Picky-picky. Okay, let's try this." His fingers slid across the keys. The display flickered, then changed colors suddenly.  
  
"We're in," Heero announced, sounding (for Heero) quite pleased.  
  
"You're welcome," Duo muttered, and dropped his head down on his arms. He had almost dropped off to sleep when Heero jabbed him, hard. "What now?"  
  
"Read this."  
  
Duo looked at the part of the paragraph that Heero was pointing to.  
  
  
01020101200120201002010021010211020001201012000021102010021112000020101201  
10211121012010210021020101200120000201002102000021120101200121020001210120200020  
1102102...  
  
"I can't read it," he growled. Heero seemed to forget that the rest of them hadn't memorized all of the OZ codes.  
  
"It has symptoms not unlike those of the plague..." Heero read.  
  
Duo woke up with a jerk. "What does?"  
  
"A man-made disease that OZ has decided to create."  
  
Duo's eyes widened. "Are they insane?" he whispered.  
  
Heero didn't answer the question. "Get Quatre and Trowa. They need to hear about this too. Then we can decide what to do."  
  
"Should I see if I can contact Wufei? Annoying as he was, I'm starting to wish he hadn't decided to leave."  
  
"Don't bother. There's nothing he can do about it. It would be a waste of time. Just get Quatre and Trowa."  
  
Duo opened the door to find Quatre on the other side of it, one hand raised to knock.  
  
"Hey, I was just coming to get you. We have a problem."  
  
Quatre nodded. "I'll get Trowa," he replied.  
  
Moments later the four of them were crowded into the tiny room Heero and Duo shared. The only light came from the glowing computer screen. It made them all seem paler than they really were, and it brought out the shadows under their eyes.  
  
Heero gestured to the laptop. "Let me summarize. I haven't read it quite thoroughly yet, but enough to get the general idea." His fingers clenched and unclenched, as though searching for something to do.  
  
"OZ has created their own disease in one of their satellite labs, H-Z-917784. It has a long gestation period, so it has lots of opportunity to spread before the victim realizes they're sick. It has symptoms similar to those of the plague: fever, vomiting, dehydration, fainting spells, and ganglia, frequently ending in death."  
  
Duo decided not to ask what ganglia were. Instead he quietly addressed the floor as he asked, "So what do we do?"  
  
"This isn't our area of expertise. We're soldiers, not doctors," Trowa commented.  
  
Quatre bowed his head. "What little evil isn't already in existence, man takes it upon himself to create," he quoted dryly. He shook his head as though trying to clear it of this gloomy thought and asked, "Does it say what they plan to do with it? Was it just to see if they could, or are they actually going to use this?"  
  
"They wouldn't have gone through this much expense and trouble if they didn't want to use it," Duo objected.   
  
The Arabian nodded. "You're probably right, Duo. What I should have asked was if we knew where, when, and how."  
  
"L2," Heero replied. "Two days from now, at noon. They're going to send in a shuttle with some of the disease on its cargo, to be released upon the population at that time. You all remember that L2 is one of the few colonies that has unwaveringly protested OZ's actions from the beginning. Perhaps OZ views this as a way to obliterate one of its larger political enemies without seeming to be involved."  
  
Duo used a few of the less-attractive words from his vocabulary.  
  
"I agree," Trowa murmured, "But we still haven't determined what our course of action should be."  
  
"Stop them, of course!" Duo cried. "We go to L2, wipe out the shuttle before it ever gets in! We stop it before it ever starts."  
  
"Not practical," Heero replied. "There will be several shuttles going in and out of L2 for the next few days. We can't destroy them all. Besides, the shuttle could already be there, for all we know. This didn't say when the shuttle would arrive, only when the cargo would be unloaded."  
  
"Then we need to go there, alert the civilian population and evacuate-"  
  
"Duo, do you really think they'd listen to you? Just because L2 didn't side with OZ doesn't mean they're siding with us. Besides, where could they go? No colony would welcome them for fear of the disease. In addition, OZ controls most of the shuttles. Without OZ's cooperation, they're trapped."  
  
Duo put his head in his hands and began a wordless moan.   
  
Quatre put an arm around him, saying, "Don't worry. We'll think of something. We won't let them get hurt."  
  
The other pilot didn't answer.  
  
"He has friends on L2, you know," Quatre said quietly to Heero. His tone wasn't in the least accusing. It was a just a gentle reminder. You may not be personally affected, but he is. Don't forget it.  
  
"I'll continue to look this over. Maybe I'll turn up something." Heero's voice didn't seem to hold much hope.   
  
"If worst comes to worst..." Trowa began, but left his sentence unfinished.  
  
"No." Quatre spoke the single syllable with a force that startled the taller pilot.  
  
"It would be a last alternative," he said mildly.  
  
"It shouldn't even be considered a choice. We are going to protect the colonies, not destroy them. I refuse to do OZ's work for them."  
  
Heero was typing once more on the laptop. "You'll do whatever is needed, Quatre. If it's what is necessary to stop this artificial epidemic from spreading, you'll be there with us if or when we blow the colony up."  
  
Duo flinched slightly.  
  
"We don't have the right to do that," Quatre said.  
  
"We have the ability. The gives us responsibility. And, if OZ goes through with this, and if we're unable to stop it, we have the obligation."  
  
As though he was merely thinking aloud, Quatre replied "The power of death is too much power. No one should have that much power, but here it is, and they have it, and we have it too." He stood up to look over Heero's shoulder.  
  
Heero glanced up briefly at him. "All we can do with it is try to use it for the best; to do what is best for the people."  
  
Quatre shuddered slightly, pulling away from Heero as he asked. "Who are we to say what is best for the people? What gives us that right to decide? Our power?"  
  
"If we don't decide, OZ will. We just have to hope that our having the best interests at heart for the colonies will help us make the right decisions for them."  
  
"I don't think our consciences can handle problems of this magnitude."  
  
"Which is why the perfect soldier has no conscience. He gives it to the people."  
  
"Which is why the perfect soldier should never exist in the first place. There's nothing there to even try stopping him from making a mistake of horrific proportions."  
  
"But there's also nothing stopping him from doing what he knows has to be done."  
  
"I hate to interrupt this," Trowa said suddenly. "But did either of you see where Duo went? Or even when he left?"  
  
Heero and Quatre looked at the empty bed where Duo had been sitting only a few moment earlier and dropped their discussion instantly.  
  
"You don't think that he..."Quatre trailed off uncertainly.  
  
"He's probably already taken off space and is on his way to L2," Heero said grimly, rising to his feet. "The fool. This makes things far more complicated. I'd better go after him." He folded his laptop under his arm and ran out the door, leaving Quatre staring after him.  
  
"What did him mean, this makes things far more complicated?" Quatre asked. "If he's going to blow it up, what's one more life?" To his great annoyance, his voice trembled slightly on the last few words.  
  
"I would suspect that Heero's not worried about Duo as a person. He's far more concerned about losing him as a soldier."  
  
Quatre chewed his lower lip as his mind turned the problem over in his head. "I think I may have an idea." He sat down on the chair in front of the desk and faced Trowa. "OZ wouldn't do something like this if they didn't think they could undo it, would they?"  
  
"They might...you know how they can be."  
  
"But it could easily backfire on them, escape and hurt their own people, run rampant on earth. They can't be unaware of that danger."  
  
"Go on." Trowa's inexpressive eyes focused carefully on his companion's.  
  
"Since they created it artificially, they have more information about this disease than we've had about most other diseases we've had to deal with in history. Do you see what I'm leading up to?"  
  
"They almost certainly would have created a vaccine as well," Trowa breathed.  
  
"That's my suspicion."  
  
"It would make sense."  
  
"If I'm right, it makes our next move obvious. We have to try and procure some of the vaccine, get it to the colony, and vaccinate as many people as possible, all within the next two days."  
  
"And we're not even sure if they have any vaccine, much less where it will be if they do," Trowa said glumly.  
  
"Well, we do know where the virus itself was manufactured," Quatre pointed out. "It was made in that lab, H-Z-917784."  
  
Trowa raised a questioning eyebrow.  
  
"Heero isn't the only one who pokes around with OZ files. He's just more successful than I am. I could never get into that one."  
  
Trowa smiled very slightly. "I wonder what the school will think when they wake up to find all four of us gone?" he mused.  
  
"Well, we won't hear a thing. We should long since be in orbit by the time they notice. Please tell me that clock is wrong and it isn't 2:30."  
  
"The clock is wrong. It's closer to 2:45."  
  
Quatre groaned. "And it feels like it too. Oh well. Let's get a move on. The sooner the start, the more people we can save, I hope." 


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two  
  
Heero's hands moved over the controls without his even having to think about or watch their movements. His Gundam lurched to its feet and took off; it's metal body shining in the reflected light from far-off suns. Its human cargo gritted his teeth and scanned the monitors searching for any sign of Duo. He saw nothing. In the deep abyss of space, nothing stirred.  
  
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Trowa peered into the darkness of the hanger that he and Duo had shared. There were two hangers in this area. Quatre and Heero used the other.  
  
"Quatre!" he yelled suddenly.  
  
"What?" Quatre jumped with surprise at the sound of the other's voice.  
  
"It's gone! Heavy-arms is gone!"  
  
"What?" Quatre looked in. Trowa was right; the huge machine had completely vanished. "But Death-scythe is still here," he realized. "Duo must have-"  
  
"But why would he have?"  
  
"Maybe to throw Heero off his trail a little? I don't know Trowa. But you'll have to take Death-scythe, or else ride along with me in Sand-rock."  
  
Trowa had calmed down again, and was his usual deadpan self. "I'll take his, but when we catch up with him, I'm going to want an explanation."  
  
Quatre decided that he was glad he wasn't Duo.  
  
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Duo wasn't exactly very happy to be Duo at the moment either. He was starting to wish he had just taken Death-scythe, even though the com-link was broken. It had been a silly reason to switch. It wasn't like he was going to be using it anytime soon. He flipped on the monitor display and saw L2. Well, at least he would be going home.  
  
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"There it is," Trowa announced. "Not very impressive, is it."  
  
"And yet it may have just spawned humanity's destruction." Quatre's mind had been on other things when Trowa spoke. For a moment he wasn't even certain he had spoken the thought aloud.  
  
"So we'll just have to save the day," Trowa replied with a levity he didn't feel. They landed in the docking bay and got out to survey their surroundings. There was no one around. They could hear their footsteps echoing with an unbelievable noise in the enormous room.  
  
"Let's split up," Quatre said, almost whispering. The silence was more grating to his nerves than most noises would have been.  
  
Trowa, who had returned to his usual silence, just nodded.  
  
When he was gone, Quatre regretted his suggestion. It had seemed the sensible thing, and after all, the faster they completed this search, the sooner they could leave this eerie place. Perhaps it was the just the silence, or the sense of isolation, but he was starting to get a very bad feeling about in his stomach.  
  
A noise froze him in his tracks. It hadn't been a loud noise. It hadn't even been a very suspicious sounding noise. It had just been the faintest of clicks, like someone typing on a computer a few rooms away, or the gentle shutting of a drawer. Quatre moved in the direction he thought the noise had come from. The door to one of the rooms was cracked open slightly. He peered through the crack.  
  
A young woman was standing there, clipboard in hand, carefully examining something on a computer screen. Quatre looked intently at her, uncertain. He wasn't as amazed about finding another person on the satellite lab, indeed, it would have been strange if there hadn't been anyone. He was startled at who it was. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open and entered the room.  
  
"Sarah?" he asked, praying that he was wrong, that she wasn't who he thought she was, that he had just discovered a look-alike.  
  
She whirled. "Quatre? What are you doing here?"  
  
"I was just about to ask you that," he answered softly. "Tell me you don't work for OZ now, Sarah. Please say that you don't."  
  
"I do, Quatre. I'm head of research on this satellite."  
  
He stared. "But Father..."  
  
"What about Father?" Her voice had a bitter edge.  
  
"What about your people? You must know what this lab has been doing! Creating a disease for the express purpose of deliberate murder?" His anger rose quite suddenly to the surface.  
  
"What about it? As if you can claim to have been loyal to your upbringing. You're as deliberate a killer as any virus. Worse, really, since you have free will, and claim to have a conscience."  
  
He fell back as though stung. Brother and sister faced each other for the first time in over a year, as the final echoes of their words faded.  
  
Shaking his head, Quatre finally said, "At least I'm trying to do something good, even if I don't always succeed. That's more than you can claim."  
  
"At least I don't lie to myself about the relative merits of what I do. I know what I'm doing is wrong, and I accept it, along with a nice paycheck." She picked up a needle and began preparing a shot.  
  
"So you sell your abilities to the highest bidder, regardless of anything?"  
  
"You sold your abilities on the gamble that you would always be able to know what the right thing to do was. You seemed to have lost that gamble, Quatre."  
  
He was no longer completely listening to her. "You seemed to have forgotten your Hippocratic Oath," he commented, watching her hands as they moved with deadly accuracy over the needle.   
  
She had obviously done this before. The movements were practiced. It almost reminded him of the way Heero used the controls in his Gundam. Or the way he himself had played the piano. The hands would remember, and leave the mind free to think on other things.  
  
"What?" She paused before quoting. "I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them."  
  
He nodded. "That doesn't bother you in the least, does it."  
  
"Not at all, nor does this." Her hand moved in a graceful arc, plunging the needle into his forearm.  
  
He gasped with the sudden and unexpected pain. "What..." The world was growing rapidly dark and foggy. "What did you do?"  
  
The satellite seemed to be spinning around on an insane orbit. He clung to the table, even as he felt his legs dissolve under him. Slowly he sank to the floor, the darkness catching itself around his eyes and forcing him into a nightmarish sleep.  
  
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Trowa typed quickly on the computer. He slid with ease through various files, searching for any record of the creation of a vaccine. His hand suddenly spasmed, and for a moment he felt sick and dizzy. Then it passed, but it left him confused, and a little worried. He had never had any dizzy-spells or anything like them, and this definitely wasn't the time to start doing so. With a mental shrug, he continued with his search. A few more files, and then he found it.  
  
Skimming through the technical jargon, he found that those who stood any risk of being exposed had been given a vaccine. Since that number was small, not much vaccine had been produced. However, the small extra that there was had been stored in one of the many labs that filled the station. He memorized the location, and went off in search of it.  
  
As he passed by the docking bay, a sudden flurry of motion and noise caught his attention. A shuttle was just about to take off. A blond young woman was speaking sternly to a bored looking soldier. Trowa couldn't hear what she was saying, but he saw the soldier salute, and heard the crisp response of "Yes Dr. Winner, we'll take every precaution. We'll see that he gets there, and that we stay safe and sound."  
  
The woman, now identified as Dr. Winner, nodded, and seemed to be bidding them good-bye. Trowa tried to sort out the situation. Could the last name possibly be some sort of crazy coincidence? Maybe, but Trowa didn't really believe in coincidence. And where was Quatre anyway? And who was this 'he' onboard the shuttle? It didn't take a rocket scientist to put the two bits of information together, but Trowa didn't like the picture they seemed to form.  
  
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Duo stood on the pavement of L2 and rejoiced at just being there. He knew this colony like the back of his hand, better, really. He remembered every turn in the road, every crack in the sidewalk, everything. He also remembered that he hadn't eaten for several hours, and that there was a place less than a block away that served some of the most fabulous cheeseburgers he had ever known. He began walking towards it, slowly, drinking in the sights of all the familiar surroundings. He hadn't even realized that he missed this place so much.  
  
He was just passing by the hospital, when someone called his name in a voice that was both incredulous and overjoyed. He turned just in time to see a pair of shining brown eyes and long dark hair before she had hugged him. Then she pushed him back and began studying his face.  
  
"Why were you gone so long?"  
  
He finally recognized his childhood friend. "Vincla!"  
  
She laughed, and he saw that her teeth were still perfectly white, and that the one up front was still crooked, just the way he remembered her. That is, when he took the time to remember her. He felt suddenly guilty for not even thinking of her for close to a year, and they had been such close friends as children.  
  
"Don't you know me, Duende?" It was her own special nickname for him, though she would never tell him what it meant.  
  
He grinned and wrapped one arm around her shoulder. "I was blinded by your beauty," he replied extravagantly.   
  
"It has been a long time," she commented as they walked. "It has been so quiet around here, without you and your laughter."  
  
"There hasn't been a whole lot of laughter anywhere lately."  
  
She frowned and shook her head. "We will not speak of such things. We must speak of happier time now." Her face brightened. "I am on my lunch break now! Let's go someplace to eat and to talk! Or, perhaps you are busy now." Her eyes dropped.  
  
"Too busy to eat? That doesn't happen much. And the day I'm too busy to spend time with you, Vincla, I'll eat my hat."  
  
She touched his hair lightly. "But you're not wearing a hat."  
  
"Which is why it's a much safer thing to say! I'll race you to the old deli!"   
  
And he ran, glad to feel the air rushing past his face. Perhaps they were both a little old to be racing up and down the streets, but at that moment, Duo couldn't have cared less. Of course, he started caring a little more when Vincla caught hold of his braid and gave it several sharp tugs.  
  
He stopped and held his hands up in a mock surrender. "Okay, okay, you win."  
  
She giggled and let go of his hair.  
  
"Just kidding!" and he dashed into the deli. "I win, and winner pays for lunch," he insisted.  
  
"I suppose that makes up for it."  
  
"Makes up for what?"  
  
She tugged her ponytail disparagingly. "Having nicer hair than me."  
  
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Quatre forced his lids apart, although they felt like they had been sealed together. His whole body felt unbelievably heavy. Something was wrong with the gravity. He forced his groggy mind into action. This couldn't just be dizziness; it felt like the center of gravity had moved. "I must be on a shuttle or something," he realized. His legs didn't seem to want to move right now, and that was just fine with him. He was starting to fall asleep again.  
  
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"So you work in a hospital?" Duo bit into a french-fry and savored the taste.  
  
She nodded. "Mostly just making beds and things, but all work is important there. There aren't enough people to do the work, and of course those who are willing do not want to do the cleaning and suchlike."  
  
He smiled. "That's my Vincla. The unbelievably important and precious one that no one notices. Someday, someone else is going to see how incredible you are, and then I'll lose one of my best friends."  
  
Some of the light went out of her eyes. "You never called me the entire time you were gone, Duo. Am I truly one of your best friends?"  
  
"Yes, and I just happen to be an inconsiderate jerk. I'm sorry." He put his hand, palm down on the table, an old gesture between them.  
  
She paused, then laid her hand down on top of it. "I forgive," she replied. Then she suddenly noticed her watch. "Oh! I am terribly late! Duo, you know where the hospital is. Come by again sometime before you leave again and see me. I missed you."  
  
Then she was gone, leaving only the feel of her small hand on top of his. 


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three  
  
Trowa loaded the tiny cargo of the precious vials carefully. There weren't very many. His main hope was that some of the doctors on the colony would be able to replicate the vaccine somehow. There were only about twenty vials here. Trowa had no experience with large-scale epidemics, but he knew it would take more than twenty shots to wipe the thing out once it got going. He chewed his lip and tried not to worry about Quatre too much. He had already tried to contact him by radio several times, but hadn't been successful. He knew that the sensible course of action was to leave. Trowa hated the thought of abandoning Quatre, especially if he was in danger, but he was practical enough to accept the necessity.  
  
"I know you'll understand, and forgive me," he spoke aloud. Then he had launched himself into space, and forced all thoughts of the blond pilot out of his mind.  
  
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Heero's eyes focused on a tiny blip of green light. His lips creased into what he used instead of a smile. "Hello, Death-scythe," he greeted the glowing dot on his screen. "Hello Duo." He switched into battle mode.  
  
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It was dark and dizzying. Someone was speaking to him in a low tone. "I know you'll understand and forgive me..." Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. There was something he had to do, something very important, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. But now there was something going on around him. Vague rocking motions, and the first slight sensation of pain.  
  
"Just leave him here," someone said.  
  
Quatre felt his body being carried. Colder air rushed across his face. With an act of will, he opened his eyes and sat up. The soldier carrying him nearly dropped him in surprise.  
  
"Let go!" Quatre demanded, fighting to control his own dizziness.  
  
"We have our orders," said the original voice behind him.  
  
Quatre struggled as hard as he could, which wasn't much, and freed himself. As he hit the ground, he offered up a quick prayer that he be able to remain standing and run. He stumbled, but didn't fall. The soldiers didn't seem to be chasing him, which was just as well. He turned a corner, and caught a streetlight for support. Whatever Sarah had given him, it was strong. He had obviously been asleep for more than a day. What medication could have such a strong, lasting effect on him? He couldn't seem to think very straight just now though.  
  
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Trowa scanned his monitors again. He was just over halfway there. The journey would be three hours at most, he decided. A dot suddenly flared up on his screen. He recognized Gundam-Wing. It was Heero', approaching him at an incredible speed.  
  
"Why is he readying his weapons?" Trowa asked aloud.   
  
The cockpit didn't answer him, except with a few alarmed beeps.  
  
"And why isn't he hailing?" The com-link stayed silent. Trowa reached up and tried to activate it. Nothing happened. It was broken. And Heero was preparing for a fight. Trowa examined the situation. He didn't want to fight Heero, especially not now when he wasn't even in his own Gundam. Heero obviously thought he was Duo, and there was no way he could contact him and tell him otherwise.  
  
Trowa found a nearby satellite, and began heading for it. They could land there, resolve the situation, and then continue on together for L2. Or so Trowa hoped.  
  
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Duo found himself walking the streets instead of staying at the small hotel room he had rented. He had already gone into Vincla's hospital and spoken to one of the head doctors there. It had been difficult to get inside in the first place, and the doctor hadn't believed him, dismissing the warning as a childish prank.  
  
Frustrated and worried, Duo now paced about the various familiar streets of his old colony. He was so preoccupied, he almost didn't see the slight figure leaning up against the lamppost, eyes shut and mouth creased with pain. He was just about to walk by, when a slight glance made him stop and turn.  
  
"Quatre?"  
  
The boy's eyes opened and he looked up at Duo with an almost feverish look. "Duo?"  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
"Just...tired. Too much sedative...It's a long story."  
  
"It's a short walk. Come on, lean on me, and tell it as we go."  
  
By the time they had reached Duo's hotel room, he had heard everything, though most of it had been confused and fragmented.  
  
"And it was your own sister? Perhaps it's just as well I haven't got any siblings to worry about!"  
  
"I have twenty-nine sisters. Fortunately, I think Sarah is the exception, not the rule."   
  
Duo shook his head. "Unbelievable," he commented.  
Quatre didn't react. He was already asleep.  
  
Duo shook his head and look at the almost angel-faced boy asleep on the couch, his face troubled and tired.   
  
"There's some quote about the sleep of the innocents, my friend, but perhaps that isn't quite appropriate," he said to the sleeping Quatre. "We're not innocent anymore, only very, very sleepy." And so he ended the one-sided conversation, and curled up on the bed.  
  
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Heero's face might have been carved from stone. When Trowa had climbed out of the cockpit, they had stood looking at one another for nearly ten seconds. Heero accepted the fact that his quarry had alluded him with apparent calmness. Of course, he accepted most things with apparent calmness, but at least he hadn't tried to kill Trowa. Yet.  
  
"So where are Duo and Quatre now?" he asked softly.  
  
"Duo is probably on L2 by now. And I have no idea where Quatre is," Trowa answered. In as few words as possible, he summed up the latest events.  
  
Heero frowned, obviously contemplating. "We're down by two. Since we have no idea where Quatre has been taken, we must focus our attention on Duo and L2. Let's go." He turned and climbed into his Gundam.   
  
Trowa hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shrugged and climbed into Deathscythe. Heero was right, as always.  
  
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Quatre opened his eyes. He felt feverish and sick. Could the sedative still be affecting him? It had been at least two days now. He knew that it was possible, but it didn't seem probable.  
  
"She might have given me something for the motion-sickness caused by the shuttle, at least," he thought. He knew that doctors could, and often did mix medications that could be given together so that they only needed to give the patient one shot. More than a sedative could have been in that shot she had given him.  
  
Much, much more could have been in that shot.  
  
Quatre's hand suddenly clenched. He stood up; ignoring the wave of dizziness that passed over him, and began weaving his way unsteadily towards the door. How could he have been so stupid? Why hadn't he figured this out sooner? He knew why, of course. It explained a lot. He had known that his mind wasn't working as well as normally. She must have given him something. There were mind-altering drugs out there, most of them completely illegal. There were ones that would slow your though-processes, and make you stupid.   
  
There was a roaring in his ears, and he could barely hear Duo's voice, as the other pilot demanded to know exactly what he thought he was doing, getting up and walking out like that.  
  
"Duo, we have to get out of here. Both of us, now. Pray, just pray Duo, that it isn't much too late already. We've...no, I've been a terrible, terrible fool..." he voice trailed away, and he would have collapsed onto the pavement if Duo hadn't caught him.  
  
"Okay..." he mused. "What now?" Well, Quatre had said they had to get away. But he was obviously in need of medical care. Perhaps he could take him to a hospital or something. That was it! Vincla worked in the hospital nearby! 


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four  
  
Down seemingly endless corridors of flickering lights, Quatre felt almost as if he had sprouted wings and was starting to fly. He needed to get away, though he couldn't remember quite why, but he knew that it was desperately important.  
  
"Keep...me...isolated," he said.  
  
"Okay, Quatre. Fine, whatever you say, old buddy. Just don't go out on me."  
  
It was Duo's voice. What was Duo doing here?  
  
"It's contagious," Quatre said, feeling his heart speed up with fear.  
  
"What is?"  
  
But Quatre was too far-gone to hear, much less answer him. As the rotation of the colony seemed to speed up beyond all comprehension, he tried to focus. The room around him was far too bright, and then it was dark and cold. People were speaking, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. High pitched beeps and flashing lights flew about his head. He clawed the air, and someone pushed a needle into his arm. The universe swallowed him up, and he fell between the stars.  
  
------------------------------------------------  
  
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a long golden braid. Everything else was still white and painfully dazzling. "Duo," he realized suddenly. "Get away, I have to be kept isolated. Back away!"  
  
A woman's laugh brought the world into sharp focus. "Good morning little brother. Clearly, you kept your priorities in good order, even while asleep."  
  
"Sarah," he recognized her.  
  
"Good. Your memory is intact. How are you feeling?"  
  
He thought about it for a second. "Lousy. How long have I been out?" He tried to sit up, and changed his mind when his vision flashed black.  
  
"Two and a half weeks. We thought we were going to lose you once or twice."  
  
He could feel his head clearing slightly, and with the clarity came questions. "Where is Duo? And what are you doing here?"  
  
"At the moment, I'm saving your life."  
  
Quatre was awake enough to notice that she hadn't answered his first question, but he could still feel the fog of sleep covering his brain. "Don't evade, Sarah. I'm too tired to deal with it."  
  
She smiled. "Yes, you are the same sweet little brother I remember. I came to L2 with the antidote for the plague."  
  
"After infecting me with it."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And you don't even try to deny it! Has the near presence of death softened you so much, Sarah?" Quatre was startled at the bitterness in his own voice. He really must be doing badly.  
  
She smiled. "At this point I really ought to lie to you, and tell you that yes, I came to my senses when I saw my poor baby brother so ill, and knowing that it was all my fault infused me with such guilt...But if I said anything of the sort, it would be a lie. I changed my mind about letting you die, because I think you'll do me more good if you're alive."  
  
Quatre turned his face away with painful slowness. "Although I dislike your logic, I'm happy with the conclusion. Now go away and let me sleep." The brief moment of comprehension had faded, and he felt fuzzy and tired.  
  
"That would probably be best for you, but I can't do that."  
  
He looked at her warily. There was a needle in her hand. "Sarah..."  
  
She didn't let him finish. The needle slipped easily under the nearly translucent skin, and sent a burning sensation all up his arm.  
  
"I'm getting really tired of you doing that. Last time, I nearly died. What happens this time?" The room seemed to be wobbling slightly.  
  
"It will wake you up."  
  
The pain increased in his arm and began to spread slightly. He took a deep breath, and held it, slowly counting to ten, then fifteen, then twenty, as the pain refused to fade.  
  
He heard Sarah stand up, and heard her voice calling something about "keep him under heavy surveillance!" He shut his eyes as tightly as he could, and watched the uncertainly colored suns that burst upon his eyelids.  
  
"Quatre, focus on my voice," Sarah was saying.  
  
"Go away!" he said, or at least tried to say that. All that came out was a somewhat smothered mumble.  
  
"Listen to me, Quatre. You have to cooperate, or Duo might be killed."  
  
Duo? He didn't even know where Duo was. She was almost certainly lying. Almost...but could he take that chance?  
  
She seemed to follow his thought processes. "Just think about Duo." Her voice was soothing, though she seemed almost nervous. "Imagine his face, Quatre. Say hello to him."  
  
What was her game? An image of Duo came into his mind abruptly. His head was bowed, and there were traces of tears on his cheeks.  
  
"Hello," Quatre imagined his own voice speaking to the vision.  
  
The image screamed aloud, startling Quatre. He hadn't imagined that. He wasn't controlling this vision.  
  
Quatre choked aloud and the image vanished from his mind. The pain was beginning to fade slightly and he sat up in the hospital bed, feeling sick and worried, and too upset to notice that some of his strength had returned. Sarah's face was aglow, and her eyes were shining with triumph.  
  
"I knew it!" she cried.  
  
"What are you talking about? What did you know? What happened!" he demanded.  
  
"You! I knew about you! You are a new-type!"  
  
"Stop," he interrupted. Too much information coming too fast. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. "Go over this from the beginning. What is a new-type? What makes me one? And what exactly happened?"  
  
But she was too drunk on her success to really listen to him. "You're a new-type! What else is there to say?" She slowed down and turned to him, explaining further. "You have abilities far beyond those of normal human beings. You're like some sort of living, breathing radio! Of course, those powers only work when you're terribly upset, so I had to induce pain in order to make it work, but it did, Quatre, it was a success!"  
  
"But what happened? Where's Duo!"  
  
"He's right across the hall. He's fine now, but when you made contact, he felt all of the pain you were feeling."  
  
"Made contact? You mean he heard me?"  
  
She nodded eagerly. "That's how we knew. Quatre, do you have any idea what we could do with these powers?"  
  
"I don't want to know what you want to do with these powers." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "But I can guess. I want to talk to Duo. I don't want to talk to you." He raised himself up on one elbow, and began the painful process of sliding his legs towards the edge of the bed. "You said he was just across the hall?"  
  
"Quatre, don't push yourself too hard. Be careful."  
  
"You be careful. You almost sound as if you're actually concerned about me."  
  
"I am. Terribly concerned."  
  
"Oh that's right. You might get in trouble if your latest experiment dies on you." At long last his feet touched the floor, and he unsteadily rose up on them, glad that they could hold his weight. Two and half weeks was a long time to be on one's back.  
  
"Quatre, stop. I'll get your friend." She left the room.  
  
He sat down again, annoyed at his own physical weaknesses. But obviously he had made progress. Was it the result of the shot she had given him, or was he simply recovering from all the drugs that had been pumped into his system over the last few weeks?  
  
Duo bounded into the room. "Q-ball! You're awake!" He grinned. "You scared me to death, and back again! Don't you ever, ever do that again!"  
  
Quatre found himself smiling in spite of himself. "I'll try not to," he assured his friend. Then his worries resurfaced. "Did they keep me in isolation? I was so afraid that it might spread."  
  
Duo's eyes darkened briefly and an expression of pain flitted across his face, but it was replaced almost instantly by a comforting smile. "Your sister got here on the third day with the vaccine, and gave everybody a shot."  
  
Quatre hadn't missed Duo's reaction to his question. "But before the third day?" he asked, dreading the answer.  
  
Duo's eyes dropped. "Well, I got it, but I survived long enough to get the antidote too. Only one person actually died, Cat. Everyone else hung on long enough for your sister to cure them. Do you know that they're calling it the plague? You'd think they'd at least come up with a new name or something."  
  
Quatre refused to follow the new topic of conversation. "You knew them...the person that died, I mean?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah I knew her. She was a friend of mine actually."  
  
"Oh Duo." He started to form the words, 'I'm sorry,' but stopped. 'Sorry' would never be enough. 'Sorry' wouldn't bring Duo's friend back. 'Sorry' was one of the most worthless words ever invented.  
  
"It's not your fault," Duo whispered, obviously sensing the unspoken words. "You didn't know, and anyway, it's OZ's stupid disease."  
  
Quatre frowned and picked at the corner of the bed. "There have been far too many things that I've done that have hurt people, and yet haven't been 'my fault.' That has to change." His eyes darkened. "Duo, we have to get out of here. Maybe if we-"  
  
But Duo was shaking his head violently. "I don't know. You're in pretty bad shape Quatre. Maybe we should stick around, for the medical care if nothing else." He drummed his fingers lightly on the bedrail.  
  
Quatre frowned. He ought to be feeling better in a few days. It was a strange objection to make. "I don't need intensive care. All I need is a few days of rest. I can find that somewhere else. I just want-"  
  
"I think you might be overestimating yourself. Maybe we should talk to your sister. She's a doctor." Duo continued drumming his fingers.  
  
Now that was an even stranger thing to say. Duo knew that Sarah was the one who had infected him with the plague in the first place, and of course she wouldn't be eager to help him escape. He was about to ask Duo what he was talking about, when he noticed that the rhythm of the other pilot's drumming fingers had changed. It wasn't a random series of beats. He began to listen, and realized that it was Breese, a more recent tapping code, very similar to Morse, but with a few differences.  
  
"Maybe. I don't know. Just let me think for a minute." Quatre closed his eyes and listened to the taps. Short, short, longer, very long, short, quite short, and on and on. It took him a minute to remember the code; he hadn't had much opportunity to learn or use it, but he remembered enough. He opened his eyes again and nodded.  
  
Duo studied his face for a minute, then began tapping the bedrail again.  
  
-C- -A- -N-, he paused for a moment, -Y- -O- -U-, he stopped again, then continued -U- -N- -D- -E- -R- -S- -T- -A- -N- -D-. Duo looked up, the question in his eyes.  
  
Quatre smiled. "I understand," he said with slight emphasis, "that you're worried about my condition, but you needn't be. I know myself pretty well. I'm on the mend. I want to get out of here soon." He tapped his fingers against the edge of the bedrail.   
  
-T- -O- -N- -I- -G- -H- -T-. He looked up. Duo nodded. They would try to leave that night, and pray that no one who was listening in had been able to understand the Breese. 


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five  
  
It was dark when he opened his eyes again. The room was warm, and he found it easier to sit up and stretch than it had been this morning. A movement in the corner caught his eye, and he froze as Sarah stood up from where she had been bent over one of the many monitors.  
  
"Quatre?" Her voice was almost gentle.  
  
"Yes, I'm awake," he replied, wondering what she was doing here, what she wanted, and wishing that she would leave soon.  
  
She sat down on the chair beside the bed and regarded him, sitting up. Too late, he realized that he should still be lying down. She smiled. "I knew you were acting a little. I expected some weakness, but you seemed to have more than I'd anticipated."  
  
Vaguely annoyed with himself, Quatre snapped, "How could you be sure with a disease that you had never tested on a human being before, especially with the addition of some sort of tranquilizer?"  
  
"I had my hypothesis, and several lab-tests." Her smile grew. "I suppose you're still angry about all of that, Quatre? I am sorry, you know."  
  
The smile was mocking and deliberate, meant to make his anger seem childish, foolish, unjustified. He refused to rise to the bait. "Sometimes being sorry isn't enough, Sarah."   
  
She raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Oh? I thought you were all-forgiving."  
  
His voice began to speed up slightly, as though to hide the hint of pain that had risen up in it. "Sometimes even undoing the damage you've caused, if you can, isn't enough. Sometimes there isn't anything to be done that can ever fix things." He looked down at his hands, folded lightly on his knees. "Some things are beyond forgiveness, Sarah." He looked back up at her. "This was one of them. It was an attempt at murder, deliberate, thought-out, and cruel." He studied her face. "I'm not going to wake up one morning and be over it."  
  
She bent her head slightly, mournfully. "What can I do, Quatre?"  
  
He laughed, but stopped the moment he realized how bitter it sounded. "Why are you asking me? If I knew how to fix the unfixable, do you think that I would be in this position?" His eyes narrowed with unaccustomed hostility. "Perhaps this tendency to do evil runs in the blood," he told her, spitting out the sarcasm, slightly surprised at his own actions.  
  
Her eyes widened with shock and hurt.  
  
Quatre wondered if it was real, if he had actually managed to finally hurt her; or if it was still just an act. She could very easily know that he and Duo had planned on escaping soon, even if she hadn't been able to decipher their code. Most likely this whole scene had been planned out to get him to forgive her, to trust her again, and to give up whatever plan he and Duo might have been working on. Well, it wasn't going to work; not this time. He was tired of being manipulated so easily. It was possible they were just running into another trap, but it didn't seem likely. At any rate, no trap could be worse than the one they were in now.  
  
"Where's Duo?" he asked, keeping his voice cold.  
  
"He's across the hall, probably asleep. It's after eleven." Her voice shook as though with restrained tears.  
  
"Can I go see him? I need to practice walking anyway." He refused to feel sorry for her. Even if her sadness was genuine, which he doubted, she had made her own decisions. Now she would have to reap the fruits, even if they did turn out to be poisonous.  
  
"I suppose so," she replied, though she obviously didn't want to let him. But there really wasn't much of an excuse, unless she was going to stop pretending, and admit that this was a prison, not a hospital.   
  
He leaned on her, a little more than he actually needed to. There was still no reason to let her realize that he was nearly up to full strength, though he didn't know how good his stamina might be. He could always use adrenaline shots, if Duo had been able to get hold of some, but he'd better not count on them.  
  
As they passed through the doorway, her grip on his shoulder tightened dramatically and she hissed in his ear, "Don't think you've fooled me, brother-mine. I saw those tapes too. I don't know what you and Duo decided, but I saw your faces. You agreed to something, and I'm warning you now, don't even think about it. You're too valuable as a specimen to be killed, but the same can't be said of your little friend. Think about it, brother-mine. Think about it very carefully, and then rethink what you were going to do."  
  
He turned away from her and looked into the darkened room, feeling sickened by her words and by her callousness to them. He knew he would never be able to smell that sort of perfume without feeling ill. How could she have changed her disposition so quickly?  
  
"Why didn't you say any of that in there?" he asked softly.  
  
"I didn't want the monitors to hear me." She laughed.   
  
He frowned. So there had been microphones hidden in the room. He and Duo hadn't been as paranoid as he had thought.  
  
Sarah kept talking. "Oh, those fools wanted me to make friends with you, try to rekindle the brother-sister bond. I told them it wouldn't work, but they insisted I try." She gripped his chin and turned his face towards her own, leaning towards him. "Were you fooled, little brother, even for an instant?"  
  
He leaned against the doorframe for support and tried to push her away from him, "I may have been fooled for an moment, Sarah, but if so it was through wishful thinking, and I was quickly undeceived. Let go of me." He said the last part in a louder voice so that a passing nurse gave them a strange look.  
  
She released him with a murderous glare and shoved him violently across the hall so that he stumbled against the wall. But even the pain was an almost welcome relief to the numbness that had surrounded him for so long. It let him know that he was very much alive, whether he liked it or not. He glanced up and so her cold blue eyes watching him with such fury. He straightened up and faced her.  
  
"It was you who broke my violin, wasn't it," he commented thoughtfully. "I always thought it was you, but I was never sure."  
  
"What?" she asked, clearly startled by the sudden change of topic.  
  
"My violin," he repeated calmly. "One morning I opened the case and found it almost completely smashed into smithereens. I was heartbroken and furious. I thought that you were the one who had done it, but I had no evidence. But now I'm positive."  
  
She stared at him, then laughed. "Are you angry about that too, now?"  
  
He shook his head. "Not really, though it nearly made me cry at the time. I'm just curious as to why you did it."  
  
"Can't you guess?"  
  
"Of course I can guess. But I'd rather if you just told me yourself."  
  
In one movement she had crossed the hall to stand beside him and look down at his face from her almost one foot height advantage. "You say you almost cried, Quatre? Think about it a bit more. Why do you think I did it? I did it to make you sad, brother-mine. Isn't that obvious?"  
  
"I'm rather glad," he replied. It was true, but he was also saying to startle her a little.   
  
It worked. "What? Why?"  
  
"I'm glad that your hatred of me isn't anything new. It's one less thing to feel guilty for." He pulled away from her then, and slipped into Duo's room, silent as a ghost, leaving her standing in the hall, confused and annoyed. 


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six  
  
Duo hadn't been asleep, that much was obvious. When Quatre came in, he found his friend crouched down in front of the window with a look of unhappy and intense concentration on his face.  
  
"Duo?" Quatre asked tentatively.  
  
The other pilot looked up. " Hi," he said softly. "You're looking a lot better, walking and everything." He gestured for Quatre to come over.  
  
"Yes, I'm feeling a bit better, but Sarah says not to push it." He knelt down next to Duo, and looked at whatever his friend was looking at.  
  
"This window gets a good view," Duo said. "It's been my main view of the outside all week. At least there's not as much rain here as there is back on earth."  
  
Quatre examined the little gadget Duo had found. It was obviously a recording device. So they weren't to have privacy even here. They could smash the thing of course, but there was no guarantee that this was the only one, and smashing it would give away the fact that they knew they were being watched.  
  
Quatre only half listened as Duo kept up a seemingly endless stream of small talk, most of which focused on the weather and the state of Quatre's health.  
  
"Maybe when the sun comes out you'll start feeling better. They say that the weather can really affect a person's health. Do you have a window?"   
  
Quatre shook his head. "No, but I can't imagine that looking out over a parking lot will improve me any." He sat back and regarded their little eavesdropper. Clearly they couldn't plan an escape right now, but there were other things that needed talking about, and perhaps they could throw their listeners off the track.  
  
"I spoke with Sarah before I come over here," he began, quietly.  
  
Duo looked up. "Oh?" he said. "And what did you talk about? The joys of sibling rivalries? Infectious diseases? By now you two should have plenty of topics for conversation." He smiled wryly.  
  
"I think she was trying to apologize." Quatre hoped that his lies would sound convincing. "I'm not sure if I handled it very well. I sort of blew her off. But maybe she meant it. Maybe she really has changed. Maybe we can trust her."  
  
"Maybe you have a temperature," Duo replied, frowning.  
  
Quatre gestured to the chip. "She is my sister, after all. There were some jealousies between us when we were children, but that's over now. Maybe we've both finally grown up. I have to give her a chance, Duo."  
  
Duo frowned. He didn't know quite what Quatre was up to, but he was willing to follow along. "I'll be honest with you; I don't like her. But you have to do whatever you think is right." He stood. "Do you think you can walk? I don't think you should strain yourself, but some exercise might be good."  
  
"You're probably right."   
  
Quatre allowed Duo to help him to his feet, and they left the room.  
  
"Do you think they planted stuff on us too?" Duo asked.  
  
"If they did, there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think so though. Sarah spoke freely enough when we were in the hall. It was just in the room that she was careful. We'll have to hope they didn't, because if so, there's nothing we can do. We can't use Breese all the time; it's too slow, and they'd figure it out soon enough." He stopped and turned to face Duo, leaning against the wall, ostensibly to rest. "It has to be now, Duo. We've got to leave. I don't know the details, but I have a nasty feeling that Sarah is up to something. She wants to run some tests on me." He frowned. "I'm not going to stick around here and wind up as some sort of specimen on her lab table."  
  
"Did she really apologize?"  
  
"Yes, but it was just an act. She said as much in the hall." He sighed. "She also seemed to realize that we were planning a break out for tonight. She threatened to kill you if we tried. But she may have been bluffing."  
  
Duo shook his head. "It was no bluff, Cat. They've been playing gentle with us, iron fist in a velvet glove and all of that, but I don't doubt that she could do it, if she wanted to."  
  
Quatre turned despairing eyes towards him. "So what do we do? I won't stay here, Duo, I just won't. We've given so much of ourselves to this horror, I can't lose this too."  
  
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking, but we're under what appears to be a sort of martial law now. I didn't want to worry you when you first woke up, but I haven't been allowed to leave the hospital since your sister got here. At first it was reasonable; they didn't want the plague to spread. Isolation made sense, but that danger has passed. I think OZ may have taken over this colony."  
  
"So they've succeeded. Damn."  
  
"We can worry about a failed mission later. Right now we have to worry about ourselves, and getting out of here."  
  
Quatre turned to look at him, startled. This was Duo's home. He had been the one most passionately concerned about its welfare. Now he didn't seem to really care at all.   
  
"Are you sure you're okay about this?"  
  
Duo nodded. "Yeah. It's just another colony now."  
  
That was when Quatre's sixth sense woke up. "It was that person that died, the one you said you knew."  
  
"Well, she's dead now. This colony is just like any other to me now. Maybe a few more memories, but nothing special." He looked down, his face set in a calm mask of total despair. His eyes were dry. Any tears that had needed to be shed had come and gone already, and would not return.  
  
'This is why I fight OZ,' Quatre realized. 'To stop this sort of thing; to prevent anyone from ever looking the way Duo does right now. No one should have to be woken up by a phone-call at two AM to be told that they're beloved child or spouse is dead, and will never come home again. No one should have to hold a friend's hand, and feel it growing colder and colder as the minutes pass. These things shouldn't be.' At that moment he knew what Duo was going through.  
  
"We'll get out," he said softly. "We'll get out tonight. We can meet up with Heero and Trowa, and make a plan. We'll make those responsible for this horror pay, Duo. We will make them pay, or we'll die in the attempt."  
  
Duo looked up. "Don't say that, Quatre," he said very quietly. "Don't ever talk like that. If you become vindictive, I'm giving up all hope for the human race."  
  
Quatre was surprised to find his voice shake when he replied, "I'm just afraid that if we don't do something, they will." Images crashed upon his mind. "They'll turn everything into death and destruction. They'll take our pathetic, persecuted world, plunge it into darkness, and eat it alive and howling." His voice had sped up, and he put up a hand to block the flickers or red and black that flashed across his vision.  
  
Duo stepped back, almost afraid of the words themselves. "Quatre," he said sharply. "Quatre stop. What are you talking about?"  
  
He opened his eyes. "I don't know. Nonsense mostly; a bit of subconscious nightmare coming back at me. Probably Sarah's mucking about with my mind knocked a few screws loose. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."  
  
"What exactly did Sarah do?"  
  
"She went off into a tangent about my being a 'new-type.' I'd never heard to that, have you?"  
  
"I've heard a few things. Is that what happened this morning? I saw your face, and heard you say hello. I thought I was going to die for a minute, it hurt so badly."  
  
Quatre stared. "You actually heard me?"  
  
"I think I did."  
  
"That's it. We've got to get out of here. Sarah is eager as a kitten to exploit these abilities. I'm interested, but I'm not interested enough to let her anywhere near this. She's the type who would think first of how to use anything to kill people. I've already devoted far too much of myself to that ugly art. You have as well. Everything of any value we had has gone into it: Our skills, our intelligence, our families, our time, even our very will probably end up being given to it. I can't let this new ability of mine be used for murder."  
  
Duo was thinking. "I wish I had more contacts in this hospital. Vincla was the only one I knew very well, but she died."  
  
Quatre decided not to comment on the unusual coincidence. Of all the people to get the plague, the only one who dies is the one person who might have been of help getting them out. It was possible, or course. It just seemed a little too convenient.  
  
"The doors are all kept locked, at least from the inside. Even doctors don't have keys; they have to get an OZ soldier or someone to let them out."  
  
"There are soldiers here?"  
  
Duo nodded. "You haven't seen them because you haven't been down on the lower floors, but they're everywhere. They're at least two or more beside every door, and they check everyone's IDs before they let them out."  
  
"So even if we could get a hold of the keys somehow, we'd still have the guards to deal with. Anything else?"  
  
"Well, they know what we look like, and they know that you're OZ's pet project right now. They're not going to let you just waltz out of here."  
  
"What about you?"  
  
"They'll just shoot me. I have no intrinsic value to them. They've kept me around because Sarah said that first communication would be easier with someone you already knew pretty well."  
  
"You knew about this?"  
  
"Only bits and pieces. I've been eavesdropping a bit, but none of it made any sense until just now."  
  
But Quatre was still thinking. "Assuming we can get the keys, will there be any other difficulty in getting out?"  
  
"You mean besides the guards? Well, that's it for the hospital. But keep in mind: I haven't been able to leave the building since OZ got here. Like I said, we're under martial law. For all I know, the streets are cluttered with soldiers, or we might be able to make a clean get away. There's no way of telling."  
  
"Okay. There's nothing we can do about the unknowns. But have you seen anything out of your window that we should worry about?"  
  
"I've seen a few soldiers here and there, but if we're quick and cautious we should be able to avoid them. The main problem is the soldiers in the building; and getting the keys, but you have a plan for that?"  
  
"I may, though I'm not sure if it will work. But what about the guards?"  
  
Duo looked thoughtful. "You know, those doors are locked by electricity. It's a stupid way of doing things. There was a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned padlock. If I can disconnect the power, not only do we unlock the doors, but we also leave those boys in the dark. They'll never see us coming, and they definitely won't see us go."  
  
"Can you do that? That is, without getting yourself shot?"  
  
"Yeah, I think so. What about you? Will you be all right?"  
  
"I should be. If things work out."  
  
"What if-" he had been about to say 'what if they don't?' but he swallowed the words before the escaped. Things had to work out. There not working out just wasn't an acceptable possibility. "Good luck, Quatre."  
  
"Same to you. And Duo?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I don't need anyone else to die for me. Be careful."  
  
"Will do." 


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven  
  
Duo moved slowly down the stairs. They twisted around like a square spiral. This place was so ugly. The walls were stone. They were gray and dull. It was cold, and the paint on the banister flaked away into his palm. His and Quatre's rooms were on the fifth floor. The electrical controls were in the basement. In the last few weeks, Duo had explored the entire hospital from top to bottom, and had gotten to know several of the patients and staff very well. He also knew where just about everything was.  
  
He found the electrical box without much trouble.  
  
He disconnected a few of the more vital wires with even less trouble.  
  
He nearly broke his neck trying to find the stairs in the dark.  
  
But it was worth it. He had been careful to take out only the lights in this area of the building; he didn't want to kill anyone who was on some sort of machine to keep them alive, or to mess up a doctor in the middle of surgery. All around him people were rushing. He heard someone shouting that they needed 'start up the backup generators!' and Duo realized he needed to hurry. He reached the door they had agreed upon and waited silently, praying that Quatre would be there soon. The sound of restless movement nearby told him that at least one of the guards hadn't deserted his post, despite the dark.  
  
'Come on, Quatre,' he thought. 'We don't have long.'  
  
------------------------------------------------  
  
Quatre stood still in the hall for a moment after Duo had gone dashing off, clearly pleased to have a course of action laid out for them. But Quatre couldn't help being afraid of his own plan. However, there was nothing for it. He walked down the hall and entered his own room.  
  
"Sarah?" he asked of the darkness.  
  
"What?" she said.  
  
"I wanted to...apologize." Thank goodness for the darkness that hid his face. Did she know him well enough to hear a lie in his voice?" He hoped not.  
  
"Oh?"  
  
He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Look, we may have our differences, but we have to work together for now, so we need to try to get along."  
  
The lights suddenly went on, momentarily blinding him. She stood next to the switch, studying him.  
  
He knew that soon Duo would reach the basement and the light would go off again.   
  
He had to hurry, since he wasn't sure he could find the door in the dark. Of course, he was assuming that she had a set of keys on her. If she didn't...well, that wasn't worth thinking about.  
  
"What are you saying, Quatre?"  
  
"I think we should continue with the experiments. This ability of mine may have its uses. I need to develop it more. You're the obvious one to go to. You know more about it than I do."  
  
"You want my help?" she asked him, obviously incredulous.  
  
"If you want mine," he replied softly. Giving in completely wouldn't assuage her suspicions. But he was running out of time.  
  
She studied him for a long moment, then seemed to come to a conclusion. "All right." She crossed the room and picked up one of the needles. "Remember what I said: This only works when you're under heavy stress. Therefore, we have to induce something. Pain is easiest, I'm afraid."  
  
He held up one hand. "Are we sure that it only works under stress? Maybe it's been like that so far because it's only been instinctive. Could it be done by an act of will?"  
  
She looked thoughtful. "You know, that's very possible."  
  
"That's good to know," he said, and shut his eyes.  
  
"Why?" she asked, or at least started to ask. Actually, she opened her mouth, and dropped the floor, her eyes rolling back in surprise and pain.  
  
Quatre opened his eyes and wiped them quickly. They were still watering from the sudden light. That was all; just the bright light.  
  
He knelt by his sister and quickly checked her left pocket. It had her ID and her wallet. No keys though.   
  
The lights went out, leaving them both in total darkness.  
  
She was moving now. He checked the right pocket and found a comb, a pen, and...a set of keys! Then he fell back with a cry, her nails scraping bloody lines down his arm. He leapt to his feet and felt her talon grip his elbow. He tried to wrench away and felt what could have been teeth on his hand. In the dark he struck out and found his knuckles making contact with something soft. He heard her yell, but he almost didn't care. He just turned and ran down the hall as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did.  
  
The lights flickered as he reached the door and nearly crashed into one of the soldiers standing there. Then Duo was standing beside him, his face tense but his eyes alight with mischief.  
  
"Oh good. I was starting to worry that you'd gotten bored and gone of to play golf or something," he said smiling.  
  
"Golf?" Quatre asked in surprise, tossing the keys to him.  
  
"Hey!" the soldier yelled, finally realizing what was going on.  
  
"Sure, what else to rich kids do when they're bored?" Duo asked, ducking a wild punch from the soldier and unlocking the door.  
  
"I played chess," Quatre told him sternly, and followed his friend out the door.  
It was raining out, and the streets were dark and slippery. They dashed across them at a speed that would have better suited a marathon.  
  
"Follow me!" Duo called, and ducked around a building. He lifted up a crate to reveal a shallow ditch beneath it. "Come on!" He dove in, Quatre on his heels. The crate slammed back down over their heads, and left them stranded in the darkness.  
  
Raindrops beat down on the crate from the outside. Quatre began to think he would never get the sound out of his head. He lay gasping in the dark, desperately trying to slow the beating of his heart.  
  
"Okay, he's probably gone by now," Duo said, and pushed the crate up. "Yeah, he went away. Let's get out of here before he comes back." He helped pull Quatre out of the ditch and to his feet. They walked at a more leisurely pace down the street.  
  
"How did you know that was there? I mean, I know you use to live here and everything, but..."  
  
"I built it. There are half a dozen of these sorts of things scattered all around the place. It's sometimes useful to be able to do a disappearing trick."  
  
Quatre smiled. "Well, if we get away with this, we will have definitely messed OZ up, at least a little bit. Not only did they lose one of their pet-projects, they also let two of the Gundam pilots escape."  
  
"Is this the part of golf where we yell 'fore!' and they duck?" Duo asked.  
  
"I don't know about that, but this is definitely the part of chess where I say 'checkmate,' and knock over their king."  
  
"Lucky king. He gets to lie down. I'm tired. Let's find a hotel."  
  
"A different one than last time. We'd best be careful. I say we try to leave as soon as possible. Let's hope they haven't found your Gundam, that is to say, Trowa's Gundam."  
  
"I don't think they will; I left it with a friend who owns a hanger. He's a good guy, he won't tell."  
  
"If you say so." 


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter 8  
  
Heero leaned forward, his eyes cold and determined. "I'm going to ask you again. This time answer me, and honestly. Have you seen Duo with in the last few weeks?"  
  
James shook his head back and forth. "Duo left over a year ago," he said, as he had last time. His voice trembled slightly. "I haven't seen him since then."  
  
"I know that you're lying. I know that Duo got to L2 safely. I also know that his Gundam is stored in your private hanger. He couldn't have opened the door to the hanger without you, at least not without breaking it. It's keyed to your voice." Heero slowly drew his fist back. "Tell me where Duo is."  
  
Trowa caught hold of Heero's fist. "That's unnecessary," he said softly. "Look," he said in a louder tone, meeting James' eye. "We're friends of Duo. We're not going to hurt him, but we need to find him, now. You have to help us."  
  
The man's eyes darted back and forth between the two. Trowa kept his face schooled to his ordinary unrevealing expression. Heero crossed his arms across his chest, but the threat of what would happen if James did not cooperate was clear in his stance.  
  
"I don't know exactly where he is now," he began cautiously, "But I have a pretty good guess. Try Double-Dice. It's a motel, and an old hangout of Duo's. If he's laying low, that's probably where he'll be."  
  
Trowa nodded and he and Heero made their slow way down the street. Neither of them thanked James or said good-bye.  
  
"Think he was telling the truth?" Heero asked.  
  
"I think so. We'll find out soon enough." Trowa suddenly stopped and leaned against a nearby wall.  
  
"Trowa?" Heero asked, stopped to look at him curiously.  
  
The boy shook his head and took a ragged breath. "I don't know," he said. "I just felt dizzy or something for a moment. I'm okay now."  
  
Heero frowned. "Are you certain? If you're not in good physical health, we..."  
  
"I'm fine. Whatever it was, it's over now."  
  
------------------------------------------------  
  
Duo woke up when Quatre started crying. At first he didn't know what had wakened him, and he sat up in bed and peered around in the darkened room. By the dim light from the window he saw Quatre roll over and sit up.  
  
"Duo?" he asked softly.  
  
"Are you okay?" Duo stood and flipped the light-switch, then put up a hand to block his eyes from the blinding light. "What's wrong?"  
  
Quatre didn't move when the light struck his eyes. There were twin streaks on his face where tears had fallen, but he was calm now. "I'm sorry I woke you," he said. "I tried not to make too much noise."  
  
"You didn't make any. I just had a sort of nightmare and woke up. I think you might be projecting your emotions or something. What's wrong?" Duo sat down on the edge of his bed and waited. He wanted to know what it could be that had filled Quatre's mind with shadows and gloom.  
  
"I can't sleep, Duo. I keep having nightmares." Quatre sat up and rubbed the edges of his eyes. "I can't stop thinking about what I did to Sarah."  
  
"She was evil, Cat. She deserved it."  
  
"Nobody deserves that sort of torture."  
  
"It's not like you had a whole lot of other choices."  
  
"But Duo, it was just so wrong! It was like...I don't know, like kicking a baby or something. I attacked her in a way that she couldn't possibly defend herself against! It hurt her so badly." His voice grew softer. "I can still hear her the sound of her screams in my mind." He put his hands over his ears as though to block out some sound. His eyes, dark with despair, looked like bruises on his pale face.  
  
"Quatre, stop. Just stop," Duo whispered. Sorrow made his fingers clench and his body shake.  
  
"I've done an evil thing..." Quatre said, his voice like a mouthful of razors  
  
"Stop!" Duo grabbed the other's shoulders and shook him. "Quatre, you're projecting your emotions! Either calm yourself down or stop projecting, but you're killing me!"  
  
Quatre shut his eyes. After a few moments he asked, "Better?"  
  
Duo took a deep breath. "Yeah." He stood and went the mirror and began to methodically fix his braid. It was a familiar task that quickly soothed his nerves and cleared his mind.  
  
"I'm sorry," Quatre said uncertainly.  
  
"I've got a question for you. Do you do that all the time?"  
  
"What, shoot anguish at my friends? I try to avoid it," he said, trying to make light of it.  
  
"No, I mean what I just did. Do you pick up on other people's emotions a lot?"  
  
Quatre nodded.  
  
Duo shook his head and finished his braid. "How do you stand it?" he asked.  
  
"Not very well sometimes, I'm afraid." Quatre looked at his watch. "It's 5:47, nearly morning anyway. I don't feel much like going back to sleep. Do you want to go get some breakfast with me, or try to get back to sleep?"  
  
"Have you ever known me to turn down food?"  
  
------------------------------------------------  
  
"You lost them? You just let them walk out of here? You incompetent-" she cut herself off. "Screaming won't help. Do we have any idea where they might be?"  
  
"We know they're still on the colony, Doctor Winner. No crafts have entered or left the colony since the plague. The first will be leaving this morning."  
  
"And the only way out of this colony is the shuttle bay," she realized.  
  
"Ma'am," the soldier affirmed.  
  
Sarah tapped her lips thoughtfully with a pencil. "We will not inform my supervisor," she said at last. "If all goes well, we should be able to recover my brother and his companion, probably this morning. They'll be in a hurry to leave, I imagine." She straightened up. "Assemble your men. We're going to the shuttle bay."  
  
------------------------------------------------  
  
Quatre and Duo filed out of the lobby and nearly crashed into Trowa and Heero.  
  
"We've been looking for you," Heero said coldly.  
  
"Well, you've found us," Duo answered. "And boy do we have a story for you! Oh, the plague is over, by the way. OZ sent in a doctor, but she turned out to be Quatre's sister, and we had escape from her so that she wouldn't dissect Quatre's head or something nasty like that, so..."  
  
Trowa raised a questioning eyebrow to Quatre, who just said, "Let's talk about it over breakfast, okay Duo?"  
"Okay, great. There's this really nice little place a few blocks from here that makes the best bacon and eggs you can imagine, and will give you a pile of pancakes this high!" He held his hands several feet apart to demonstrate, and led the way.  
  
Breakfast was as good as Duo had promised it would be. He ate more than any of the others, though who knew how because he rarely stopped speaking. By the end of the meal, Trowa and Heero had been told everything that had happened, including Quatre's newly discovered abilities.  
  
"But you have control of it now?" Heero wanted to know. "You don't..." he hesitated, "Leak emotions or something?"  
  
"That's an interesting image," Duo said through a mouthful of toast.  
  
Quatre ignored him. "No, it's under control. I think this morning with Duo will be the last time it gets away from me."  
  
Heero and Trowa exchanged a look.  
  
"About what time this morning?"  
  
"I don't know, a little before six. Why?"  
  
"That's about right then," Trowa said. "You got me too, not just Duo."  
  
"But you didn't get me." Heero said thoughtfully.  
  
"Well, you and Quatre have never been very close friends," Duo said, as though it was obvious. Perhaps it was too him.  
  
But Heero was no longer interested in that. "Apparently distance is irrelevant. Duo who was only a foot from you, and Trowa who was several blocks away, were both effected. That could be useful to know."  
  
"Only if I was planning to use this as a weapon. I'm not, so all information regarding it is interesting only from an academic point of view."  
  
"Quatre..." Heero began.  
  
"Don't we have enough ways of hurting people as it is?" Quatre demanded.  
  
Heero was the first to drop his eyes. "We'd better get going," he said finally. "They're opening the shuttle bay at eight." 


	9. Chapter Nine

Chapter 9  
  
Heero led the way to the shuttle bay. Neither he nor Trowa broke their characteristic silence, and even Duo seemed to pick up on their gloom. Quatre was lost in his own thoughts.  
  
He felt that he had been right in his decision, but he could feel the annoyance radiating off of Heero. He had always been able to feel that, and had never given it much thought, always rather assuming that everyone could do it. But now it was stronger than ever. Perhaps practice had sharpened the instinctive skills.   
  
His recent experiences had suggested that it was possible to find even greater improvements and abilities. He could obviously direct his more painful emotions onto someone else either by choice, or even by accident if he wasn't careful. Did that mean that he could direct other emotions towards someone, like joy to Heero, or serenity to Duo? Both images were hard to imagine, and for good reason, he decided. Heero and Duo were the way they were. He had no right to try and change that. But it was something to remember and keep in mind.   
  
Perhaps he could explore these talents when the war ended. Who knew what other abilities could turn up? Maybe even telepathy? Sarah's first experiment indicated that it was possible under heavy medication. He might find a way to do it without, and imagine the benefits of that!   
  
Radio communication had problems in space; the distances were too big, and even short conversations could take hours while the words drifted between the stars.  
"Calling Quatre! Are you there Quatre? Roger!" Duo waved his hand in front of Quatre's face and grimaced. "Did you even hear a word I just said?"  
Quatre shamefacedly shook his head.  
  
Duo sighed dramatically then launched into his explanation again. "Trowa and Heero's Gundams are still at the shuttle bay, but I left mine with a friend and I have to go pick it up again. Will you wait with one of the Gemini* for me?"  
  
"Okay, but try to be quick. I want to get out of here as soon as possible. Sarah's bound to be looking for me."  
  
"I'll be as fast as I can. I'll take the communicator with me so I can contact you if I'm running a little late."  
  
Quatre nodded in agreement, and Duo vanished in a clamor of footfalls and a long whirling braid.  
  
"Trowa and I will leave in another Gemini," Heero announced.  
  
"Do you want us to wait with you?" Trowa asked suddenly.  
  
Quatre looked up, startled. "No, its okay. We'll meet up sooner or later. Take care, both of you."  
  
"You too," Trowa said. "You've had a rough past few days."  
  
Heero turned away without a word and began strolling towards their already loaded Gemini. He didn't look back.  
  
"I think that means I'm supposed to leave now," Trowa said, amused.  
  
"Well, at least he doesn't talk your ear off," Quatre answered.  
  
Trowa just smiled and turned to follow Heero. As he boarded, he turned back and waved once, quickly, then vanished from sight. In moments they were both gone, and Quatre felt very alone. He decided to go ahead and get onto his and Duo's Gemini so that he'd be near the radio if Duo decided to call. It also had the added advantage of having a nice comfortable seat in the cockpit. Days of poor sleep and this morning's 5:30 wake-up were beginning to tell on him. He checked on the controls, made a few minor adjustments, then closed his eyes and fell deeply asleep.  
  
-------------------------------------------------  
  
He awoke with a feeling of dread. It seemed to him that Duo had been gone a very long time, though his watch showed that barely an hour had passed. He considered trying to contact Duo through the radio, but sternly told himself not to be paranoid. His chatty friend might have just gotten caught up in conversation with an old acquaintance, and hadn't he said he had left his Gundam with an old friend?  
  
But despite these reassurances, his anxiety only grew as the minutes passed. He had just decided that if another ten minutes were to go by with no sign of Duo, he would try to contact him, when the radio suddenly bleeped at him.  
  
Something in his stomach twisted, and he knew that whatever he was about to hear, it wouldn't be good news.  
  
He flipped the switch and pressed down on the radio button. "Quatre here," he said clearly into the microphone.  
  
"Good morning Cat," Sarah's voice answered him.  
  
Quatre's breath caught and the thing in his stomach scuttled into his throat, but he swallowed it back and answered calmly, "Good morning to you as well Sarah. What brings you onto this circuit?"  
  
"Well, your friend Dewy..."  
  
"Duo," he corrected icily.  
  
"He seems to be in an unstable state of health. He could drop dead at any moment."  
  
Quatre reminded himself to breathe. "And just how many guns do you have pointed at his head?" he asked with forced levity.  
  
"Oh, only one, but I'm sure it can do the trick. However, I am prepared to make a bargain with you, are you listening?"  
  
"This radio doesn't have an off-button. I don't have a choice."  
  
"No, you don't have a choice," she echoed, changing the meaning of his words entirely. "I'm willing to let him go, Quatre. Relatively unharmed. You can grant him both his physical well-being, and his freedom."  
  
Quatre found himself uncomfortably reminded of dozens of bad commercials he had heard over the years. He mimicked one now. "All for the low, low price of...? What, my head on a silver platter?"  
  
"You can forgo the silver platter," she answered pleasantly.  
  
He sighed audibly. "Where are you anyway?"  
  
"Near the gate," she began to say, when her voice stopped abruptly.  
  
Quatre clutched both hands to his hand as silent tears ran down his face. He dredged up emotions from the bottom of his mind, and forced them upon Sarah. Anguish and terror clutched at her heart. Sorrow held her in a pitiless grasp. He heard her screams inside his head.  
  
The radio squalled. "Stop it! Quatre! Make it stop!" she howled.  
  
"You have the gun," he sobbed. "You make it stop."  
  
There was an endless moment of complete silence within the cockpit. Quatre shook in his chair. Then an explosion came from over the radio, and he could her it more softly beyond the walls of the Gemini. Her screams stopped, and the radio was wordless.  
  
Quatre pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He pressed his tightly shut eyes into his knees and rocked himself back and forth in that terrible, terrible silence.  
  
The door slid open and Duo dashed in, slamming it shut as he dove onto the other seat. "Death-scythe's loaded," he said briefly. "Things went nuts. She was talking to you over the radio, and the next thing I knew she put the gun to her head and..."  
  
"Stop," Quatre said. "Please, please, just stop."  
  
"But it was the weirdest thing!" Duo exclaimed as he forced the Gemini into an agonized take-off, not noticing that Quatre hadn't moved. "It was like..."  
  
"I know what it was like. I was there. I was in her mind. I tortured her until she found suicide to be a kinder option than life. I used my abilities to murder my own sister."  
  
Duo gaped at him for close to three seconds before recovering himself. "You used your abilities to save the life of a friend. Quatre, you did what you had to do. I mean, it was either me or her. No one is about to criticize your choice!"  
  
Quatre only pulled his arms tighter around his knees and pressed his face more firmly into his legs. His shoulders shook with soundless sobs.  
  
"Quatre," Duo repeated his friend's name again helplessly. "Quatre, it wasn't like you had a choice!"  
  
"No," Quatre repeated softly, "I had no choice."  
  
"It was the right thing to do!" Duo insisted.  
  
"And that's why I did it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't...ache," he whispered.  
  
"I'm sorry, Quatre."  
  
"Yeah, me too. Can you handle this by yourself? I don't really feel up to..." he let the sentence drift as Duo nodded vigorously.  
  
"No problem. Go lie down or something. Take a pill. Get drunk. Do anything, and leave the transport to me."  
  
Quatre nodded. "Thanks," he managed. Then he left. There wasn't really anywhere to go, so he went down into the cargo bay and crawled into Sand-rock, even though the Gundam was lying down, so the positioning was awkward.  
  
Now enclosed in the shelter of a soft (if overturned) chair, and several walls of metal, deep in the belly of a ship steered by the hand of a friend, he searched for the serenity that he usually found within Sand-rock.  
  
Curled up the slight warmth of the metal monster, it was the closest thing one could find to the security of an infant in a mother's womb this side of birth.  
He couldn't stop his hands from trembling. He couldn't stop crying either. His nerves felt raw and strained.  
  
"Sarah," he said aloud, and felt foolish for doing so. He twisted around in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. In the process, he managed to knock something loose. A rather large black case fell from where it had been stashed under the dashboard and landed on his legs, sliding down to his stomach. Quatre pushed himself back until he was sitting on the back part of the chair, his legs crossed beneath him. He carefully opened the case and pulled out a violin. It was a beautiful instrument, and although somewhat neglected as of late, still in nearly perfect condition. His father had given it to him as a present after his old one had been so mysteriously smashed.  
  
He refused to focus on that, and instead ran his fingers up and down the four strings that lay taut across the glossy wood. In moments he had the bow out of the case and found that his fingers had steadied enough for him to play.  
  
It was a gift of love. A sign of caring. Old memories, warm feelings, kinder days slowly filled the tiny cockpit as he drew a few soft notes out of the instrument. All of it acted as balm on his wounded heart.  
  
Quatre knew he would survive. He knew he would go on. Heroes have the right to bleed, and even the right to cry, but they can't ever give up.  
  
Far away in the cockpit of the Gemini, Duo heard a few distant notes of a song he had never heard. Relieved, he smiled.  
  
*Gemini = a craft that is large enough to hold only two Gundams. I'm not sure if they ever had such a thing on the show, (and if they did, I definitely don't remember what it was called!) so I just made this up. If the show had another craft called Gemini on it, I'm really sorry. I tried to choose a name that hadn't been used, but I never paid much attention to the mech., so I might have missed it. 


End file.
